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IBM’s Cybersecurity Predictions for 2017

|Post written by Natasha Bishop, IBM

In 2016 cyber criminals showed us their ingenuity when invading our networks, taking our private data, stealing from our banks, and hijacking infrastructure. Reports say over two billion records and counting were stolen this year. Indeed, 2016 has been a year where cybersecurity took center stage even making it to political debates. With cyber criminals diligently looking for any and every gap they can exploit will 2017 see security professionals, companies and governments fortifying their cybersecurity strategies? I had an opportunity to discuss these issues with several cyber security experts.

Michael Goedeker CEO and Founder HAKDEFNET and Security Researcher shared that he expects 2017 will bring a “proliferation of the Internet of Things as a tool to cause disruptions and attacks on critical infrastructure.” Unfortunately with all the connected devices, smart appliances and cars this seems very plausible. However, Bob Stasio, CISSP Senior Product Manager i2 Enterprise Insight Analysis predicts that 2017 willbe “the year of ‘Hunt’ analysis, where organizations will proactively search through their network for threats versus having an alert to indicate a problem.” Stasio went on to say that “companies will increasingly participate in military style “wargames” to test the readiness of their cyber security organizations.” Added to this, Morgan Wright, Cyber Terrorism and Cyber Crime Analyst expects that in 2017 “more AI and cognitive technology will be implemented to make up for the shortfall in trained and experienced cybersecurity professionals.” With companies taking on a proactive stance to fighting cyberattacks and machine help perhaps in 2017 we will see a decrease in attacks and much fewer records exposed.